The House that Roy and Verne Built; blast from the past – Parts 1 and 2; our builder went bust, and we heard it through the grapevine; up the creek without a paddle; so dry your tears, woman; counting our blessings; up on the roof, or some pricey scaffolding; Bob the (Un)-builder; ceilings, windows, doors, floors and more; Roy’s stairway to heaven; be of good cheer!
It seems almost inconceivable how long this house-building lark has been dragging on for: three full years since the slab went down in May 2021. So disjointed has the progress been, and so dispiriting the experience, that I haven’t even felt like blogging about it for the past two-and-a-half years.
For Parts 1 & 2 of This is the House that Roy and Verne Built, you can look back at the archives. Or simply click on the links below.
For Part 1 (19 April 2021), brimming with exuberance and mimosas, click here.
For Part 2 (November 2021), which brings us up to the laying of the first floor slab and eagerly awaiting the brickies (Aussie bricklayers, natch) back to start work on the second level, click here.
In fact, it’s been so long since I wrote them that I find myself chuckling at my own three-year-old jokes as if they were brand new. Sad, yet true.
Just for context, here’s a drone’s-eye view of our building site (middle foreground), looking out over the dunes at Burns Beach, Iluka WA. (Taken before the roof went on, obviously.)
Heard it Through the Grapevine
… and I’m just about to lose my mind, honey honey, yeah!
The going into liquidation of our builder, Collier Homes (owned by one Dario Amara), was announced on Monday, 22 April 2024. It had been in the offing for a while, but we had no way of knowing until it finally happened.
Five days later at the time of writing this – and the liquidation has been all over State and even national news – we still have not been contacted by Dario, the liquidator, or anyone else official. Roy did receive a call from the Australian ABC News channel, which updated its online coverage to include his comments and photos of the site at 543 Burns Beach Road.
Where does that leave us? – apart from up the creek without a paddle: brutally beached without a builder, little relevant building experience, and a bespoke abode to complete.
No Woman No Cry
So dry your tears I say, yeah…
I think we deserve a brief whinge, so let me get this off my chest and then move on.
Generalised whinge
I should first mention that the Australian house-building market, perhaps especially Western Australia, has suffered tremendously from the Covid-19 fallout. Economy-suffocating lockdowns, unwarranted and extended border closures, shortages of both manpower and materials, money-printing, rampant inflation and price escalations caused by farcical mismanagement at all levels of government – federal, state and local. More than 2,000 builders have failed over the past couple of years, not just ours.
More personal whinge
As for our personal building experience so far, I’ll heroically limit myself to mentioning just three sources of woe:
- The endless building mistakes, many only picked up by Roy because he knows our house plans inside out and was down at the site at least daily when anything was actually being done
- A frustrating absence of communication right from the get-go, even after multiple pleas for better communication; plus the obfuscations of truth and even downright lies towards the end.
- Interminable waiting for each new trade to eventually appear on site after repeated delays or no-shows.
Count Your Blessings
… name them one by one
Since Part 2 of This is the House that Roy and Verne Built, we acquired upstairs walls. (And eventually a roof, too.)
It was fun while the upstairs scaffolding was up: we could climb a ladder and walk right around the house, enjoying the best views we’d ever have. This scaffolding stayed up for months and months and months, at a reported cost of $1,500 per week, while absolutely nothing happened on site. (And you wonder why some builders fail?)
One evening, we took a couple of folding chairs and a cooler bag to enjoy sundowners on our lofty “verandah”.
Watching the sun Sundowners aloft on the first floor scaffolding, our temporary balcony
Up on the Roof
… and darling, you can share it all with me
The roofing team, too – once they were eventually prevailed upon to actually come and do the job – were incredibly quick and proficient, hurtling around with noisy nail guns going bam-bam-bam.
Before that, there had been endless issues with roof beams. These are massively heavy things that are apparently indispensable. Ours were the wrong type, or the wrong size, or in the wrong position and had to be moved – or perhaps even cut to fit. Anyway, you need a big, expensive crane like the one below to do anything at all with them.
Beam me up, Scotty,
… there’s no intelligent life down here!
Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word
It’s a sad, sad situation
Bob the (Un-)Builder
Unfortunately, yet another in a series of ludicrously incompetent bobcat-drivers came along to level the garage floor a few weeks ago. Somehow (but how, Roy, how?) he managed to whack a couple of large holes into the pristine garage ceiling, even damaging a beam. Having spent no more than 10 minutes on site, according to one of our neighbours who witnessed the carnage, he bobbed off down the lane, leaving behind far more than 10 minutes’ worth of damage to be fixed… and apparently with impunity.
What is more, another of his tribe (perhaps his other cousin Bob?) had dug up too much earth while laying stormwater drains. Oh, and rupturing both the gas and water pipes in the process: pipes laid only days earlier by the same company.
During our site’s first brush with Bob (the Destroyer?) – possibly but not necessarily the very same individual – he damaged the two fences between our site and both of the neighbouring properties: to the right and to the left. We hear that’s quite usual for these chaps. Oh, said our builder, airily: That will be fixed later on. Right. And now, three years later, he’s no longer our builder nor anyone else’s, and it will be down to us to fix those fences.
Poor Graham and Caroline (to the left) and poor Clint and Jackie (to the right), who have lived cheek-by-jowl with this farce for three long-suffering years. So sorry, guys!
I have no photos of these louts. They seem never to be in situ long enough to be recorded for photography, let alone for posterity or prosecution.
Instead, as its time for some pretty pictures, let’s admire these feathered denizens of Burns Beach who have no need of houses or builders. These two fish and forage all day, never seem to argue (quite un-gull-like, I know), and sleep wherever they like.
Dancing on the Ceiling
Oh what a feeling!
We have ceilings and cornices, installed in just two days by an amazingly adept team who did fabulous work… despite only one of them speaking any English at all, as far as we could tell.
We have windows and we have doors.
What we don’t yet have on site is the front door, but we’re assured that this magnificent structure is on its three-day voyage from Melbourne* by truck. Hurrah! Getting it into the house from the flat-bed truck is work for another day.
In the meantime, the door-shaped hole in the front of the house is firmly boarded up. That’s how they get around saying the house is at “lock-up” stage, at which point an important payment becomes due to the builder. (And was, of course, dutifully paid on time.)
(*Apparently, Roy assures me, suitably splendid Art Deco-inspired front doors cannot be sourced locally in Western Australia.)
And neither can suitably splendid Art Deco fireplaces. (Though Subiaco Restoration has an extensive range, to be fair. They supplied our cornicing.) This fireplace was made to order in Indonesia, through a Fremantle-based company called East West Design, and was recently fitted by Grant from Coastline Kitchens (see below). He did a lovely job, said Roy. How fortunate that cabinet-makers can be sourced in WA!
One Man’s Ceiling is Another Man’s Floor
Courtesy of the great people at A Touch of Class Flooring in Joondalup, we have beautiful engineered timber floors in Smoked Linen throughout the living room, kitchen, study and bedrooms. All properly protected for the time being with specialised covering. That’s the blue stuff.
Here’s the a pic taken before the protective cover went down. It feels just right underfoot,
We also have huge pallet of tiles from Craft Décor. They’ve been very good over the four years we’ve been liaising with them. It wasn’t their fault that our first choice of verandah tiles was discontinued, and we had to compromise with the closest thing available.
But it was (arguably) their fault that a box of the classic black-and-white bathroom floor tiles we’d ordered and paid for two years earlier were discovered to have “got broken” in their warehouse, and we reluctantly had to choose something different for the master ensuite.
Stairway to Heaven
With a word (s)he can get what (s)he came for
Roy’s pride and joy: bespoke wrought-iron balustrades for the stairs, made for us by Evo from a small business called Iron Style that’s been operating here in Perth for 40 years.
The design is inspired by some ironwork at London’s Hoover Building, an icon of Art Deco architecture that was opened in 1933 as a vacuum-cleaner factory and was later converted into apartments.
A Touch of Class Flooring also supplied and fitted the Black Cherry engineered timber on the stair treads; and firmly boxed it in with plywood to withstand the heavy footfall of booted tradies.
Rat in Mi Kitchen
A major step in any house build, Coastline Kitchens did a beautiful job of the kitchen and butler’s pantry. The company is based in Rockingham WA – a 90-minute drive from Iluka – so our was not the most convenient job for them.
They also worked with Roy on the design and fitting of the bathroom cabinets, the downstairs kitchenette, and the full-wall study cabinetry and shelves.
Walk Right In
We even have a fitted master bedroom walk-in wardrobe, courtesy of IKEA, and fitted by one of their professional contractors. It took him a full day, and was well worth it. As he sadly pointed out, it involved assembling 28 drawers, and drawers are apparently very, very boring to assemble.
The heroic Roy ended up helping – he assembled the shoe racks, he says, otherwise the guy would probably have had to come back the next day.
Let’s Do It
Even lazy jelly-fish do it
But there’s a lot left to do, and we’re feeling our way forward.
We’re still traipsing through soft sand to get to the back-door access, which is somewhat dispiriting. We still have plastering, rendering, tiling and paving, plus various carpentry, plumbing and electrical works outstanding. Oh, and taps, shower fittings, louvres, and much, much more.
But be of good cheer! Roy is working on it.
Up next?
We leave on 12 May on a seven-week trip: Perth to Singapore for a few nights, Singapore to London for two weeks in England, followed by a month in the South of France. There may just be something to blog about there. 🙂
Before I sign off, here’s a recent sunset over Burns Beach, WA, taken by my lovely neighbour and new BFF Nannette:
My heart just breaks. What a wild adventure and now for this to top it off.
But hoping that episode 4 can bring some joy and closure. So far your home looks amazing. It will be worth the hard work and tumultuous journey.